Chapter Two
HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND
As soon as the final chord of the waltz sounds, I take my leave of Lord Stockton. The summer evening is warm, even though a pleasant breeze drifts in from the estate grounds through open windows. Pulling out my fan, I feign being overheated and retreat to the periphery of the Saloon.
Passing behind the dozens of guests consulting their dance cards and seeking out their next partners, I do my best to avoid Mama’s line of vision as I head toward Streatfield. As I duck and weave behind our taller guests, I hope that, for once, my diminutive height is a boon.
Gathering up the hem of my skirts for easier movement, I dodge the guests pouring out of the adjoining rooms where they have gathered to enjoy the lavish buffet, cigars, glasses of bubbly Pol Roger, and subtle rounds of flirting, and emerging now for another round of dancing.
If I hadn’t, I’d be stopped by any number of people, including my tipsy older brother, Porchey, home from the war and ready to carouse.
Once clear, I traverse the remainder of the Saloon until I reach Streatfield. In a wonderfully strategic decision, he stands directly under Mama’s position on the second floor. This renders me effectively invisible to her, as this is the one place in the Saloon where she cannot see me.
In one deft, seamless movement, he moves in front of me.
Thus blocked from sight, I reach for the handle to the towering wood door situated within a wall covered in embossed leather and gilt wallpaper commissioned in Spain in the 1600s.
This is one of very few doors closed to tonight’s revelers, and for good reason.
No one wants tipsy revelers in proximity to its treasures, least of all Papa.
I turn the handle and pause on the threshold as the Library materializes before me.
Never does this room fail to delight and soothe, even amidst the cacophony and expectations of the Highclere Ball.
But, for the first time, I also find it perplexing.
Because, when I glance around the room, I am alone.
Had I not been clear with Streatfield that I was to be brought here only when he got to Highclere Castle?
Mama will be on the hunt for me if I’m out of her sight for too long.
“Lady Evelyn,” Streatfield gently prompts me along. I cannot be found near this room on tonight of all nights.
Passing into the Library, I hear the click of the door closing behind me.
I glance around the vast space again. With its gilded bookcases and ceiling, thousands of leather-bound volumes, sumptuous cerise velvet sofas, and a roaring fire within a chocolate brown marble hearth regardless of the warm night, the Library has always felt like the inside of a book to me.
It is an exquisite invitation to curl up and be ferried to other times and places.
But it is not a place to be during my very own ball.
Just then, a muffled sound emanates from the adjoining room, the Small Library that faces north.
Is it the sound of a throat clearing? Is it the person I’ve been waiting for?
Dare I investigate? Or should I scurry back to the ball and hope my absence wasn’t noticed?
Praying that it is not my father—how furious he’d be to find me here, I think—I tiptoe past the columns into the second library chamber, the one housing my father’s desk.
One of the great treasures of Highclere, the desk came from Napoleon’s suite at the Chateau de Fontainebleau.
How many times have I seen Papa proudly peek at the letter C under the arm of the chair, a sign that Napoleon himself owned it when he was consul and not yet emperor.
There, with an open book in one hand and an object in the other, stands the brilliant Mr. Howard Carter. I race toward him. “Mr. Carter! I thought you’d never get here!”
As I draw as close as I dare to the formidable man, I see a pleased half smile peeking out from under his thick mustache and a gleam in his dark, hooded eyes. I consider this reaction from the usually stoical Mr. Carter to be quite the victory, and I beam back at him.
Even though a smile is fixed in place on his lips, he grumbles, “Well, it was no easy matter to extricate myself from the British Museum.”
“Even for me?” I give him a coy glance.
“Especially for you.” He half snorts in laughter. “You might be my most discerning colleague. The list of questions you wanted me to ask Mr. Wallis Budge was positively daunting.”
I thrill to the name “colleague.” The fact that the esteemed archaeologist Mr. Howard Carter would even consider me “discerning” is compliment enough.
He’s been quietly tutoring me in the history and archaeology of ancient Egypt every summer since I was a child—save for a stint during the war—and it’s exhilarating that he thinks of me as more than a student.
Even if he’s only indulging me, he never says anything without at least a kernel of truth.
“So, what did Mr. Budge have to say about the artifact?” I ask about the British Museum Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, pointing to the object in Mr. Carter’s hand. “Is it what we think it is?” My heart is racing with the possibility.
“Mr. Budge thinks we may have hit the mark. He’s notoriously cagey and noncommittal, though.”
I have to restrain a squeal. “Can you tell me what he said? I’ve been waiting and waiting for your return from London to hear.”
“I’ve got all night. It’s not as if I plan on attending your ball,” he says, only half in jest. Of course, Mr. Carter has been invited to the Highclere ball; he’s our guest for the entire summer, as he has been for many summers before.
My father, whose full, rather long, and unwieldy title is George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, has been Mr. Carter’s archaeological patron for thirteen years.
Every winter Papa decamps with Mr. Carter to Luxor, where he spends his days in the Egyptian desert, overseeing excavations with Mr. Carter, a small army of locals, and occasionally my mother.
Never me or Porchey, much to my chagrin.
We all know better than to insist Mr. Carter attend the ball, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he was raised in a distinctly middle-class home with an artist father.
The real truth is that he loathes hobnobbing almost as much as I do.
The primary difference between us is that he has the option to refuse attendance, while I do not.
The merry-go-round of dinners and dances and house parties with the constant change of dresses isn’t the life I want. It isn’t the life of purpose I seek.
Mr. Carter places the tiny object in my white-gloved palm with a mix of reverence and care.
Bringing the one-inch, blue-glazed scarab close, I study the soapstone figurine of a beetle, its surface still amazingly shiny after three thousand years.
He and my father unearthed it just before the war during an excavation at my father’s archaeological concession at the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, before all digs were suspended.
This object, like many of the smaller artifacts discovered during that time, sat in storage while Highclere became a hospital during the war.
It only resurfaced when Papa and I sorted through the boxes and placed his favorite objects in his specially constructed cases in the Music Room, built explicitly to show off his Egyptian treasures.
This little beetle did not make the cut—gold necklaces and bracelets, bronze and electrum statues, a rare gaming board, and larger alabaster beauties outshone it—but it certainly caught my attention.
This summer, Mr. Carter and I are scrutinizing the ignored and rejected objects from those boxes, the ones deemed unworthy of Papa’s shelves.
To us, the finely etched blue images on the scarab’s surface seem a clue to a crucial mystery, one we’ve contemplated, together and apart, for years.
Consulting the British Museum Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities was necessary to ensure we aren’t on a fool’s errand.
“Well, Mr. Budge agrees with your theory that the scarab may have belonged to Hatshepsut,” Mr. Carter announces.
The news is as I’ve hoped. While I am overjoyed that this object is connected with one of the most successful rulers of ancient Egypt and one of the only female pharaohs, it still seems unbelievable. I almost pinch myself.
“Hatshepsut? Really?” I whisper, staring down at the scarab. My hand shakes at the thought it actually belonged to her.
“Yes, Hatshepsut. And, Mr. Budge said—” Mr. Carter says and then suddenly stops. His face has shut down completely, and I know only one person or thing that can cause that reaction.
I turn around to see a face icy with fury: Mama.